Multiple Identity in Asian-Americans

Although Asian-Americans initially saw themselves in ethnic-specific terms, they gradually developed a panethnic identity. Endogenous panethnic Asian-American identities first developed in Hawaii before World War II. Ethnic-specific strikes by Asian farm laborers were only partially effective. Seeing that exploitative plantation owners were pitting them against each other and that their unfair wages and poor living conditions were linked, the workers organized powerful panethnic, islandwide strikes whose success reinforced a panethnic identity. Panethnic identities developed further as the second Asian generation in Hawaii reached voting age: Asians and native Hawaiians formed voting blocs to unseat racist politicians.

After World War II, foreign relations among Asian countries were no longer undercutting pan-Asian-American relations as they had earlier. Spurred by the civil rights movement, a panethnic identity, with its potential for increased political voice about community concerns, began to develop in the 1960s on the U.S. mainland.

A collective identity as "Asian-Americans" was not difficult to form then. Groups were never asked to abandon an ethnic-specific identity. Due to restrictions on the immigration of Asians, 79 percent of Asian-Americans just before the 1965 Hart-Celler Immigration Act were either Chinese-or Japanese-Americans who shared many similarities as U.S.-born descendants of immigrants who came before a series of racist immigration laws essentially stopped Asian immigration and experienced similar race-based discrimination. Their political affiliations were not as varied as now among Asian/Pacific Islanders. In addition they were frequently seen as almost interchangeable by non-Asian-Americans in terms of racial and cultural Otherness, education and crime levels, and the tendency to avoid bumptiousness.

"Asian/Pacific Islander," a modern panethnic label, encompasses roughly thirty groups, including many, such as Thai, Burmese, and Samoans, who were not in the United States in the nineteenth century. The 1965 Immigration Act, the first to drop racial criteria, resulted in an increase in Asian immigration and a panethnic population that includes more cultures and more varied cultures than ever. In this sense, Asian-Americans' panethnicity has expanded.

Nevertheless, ethnic-specific identities still predominate. A panethnic identity that subsumes varied cultures and ancestral nationalities can be difficult to sustain, partly because it downplays endogenously apparent cultural and social differences. The varied groups now do not share many of the historically similar experiences of the pre-1965 Asian-American population. Even though asserting a panethnic identity might enable Asian-Americans to expand and mobilize resources, strengthen their political voice, and elicit more responsiveness from society, it can also exaggerate tendencies to direct hostile feelings about one Asian-American group to Asian-Americans generally.

Much like their counterparts centuries ago, immigrants arrive now with an ethnic-specific identity, reinvigorating the tendency to sustain such identities. However, the immigrants find that in addition to being considered, for example, Koreans, they are viewed as Korean-Americans, Asians, Asian-Americans, and Asian/Pacific Islanders.

After being longtime U.S. residents, they may add a panethnic identity, as do some U.S.-born Asian-Americans. However, those who do not usually do not oppose a panethnic identity; they do not see its usefulness.

The term Asian-American is both older and more widely used than Asian/Pacific Islander, but both are part of a never-ending process of creating and challenging identities. Even the issue of who should be included in the panethnic identity is questioned. For example, the Census Bureau, reflecting input from scholars, classifies East Indians as Asian, but the public often rejects their inclusion as Asian-Americans on the grounds that they do not seem to be the same race, much less the same ethnicity, as other Asian-Americans.

Grouping Asian-Americans and Pacific Islanders is also contested. On the one hand, inclusion of Pacific Islanders may make their political voice louder to the larger society than it would have been otherwise; on the other hand, distinguishing the groups would more accurately reflect differences in cultural background, identity, and social needs and might produce more focus on their concerns. For Pacific Islanders, as for many Southeast Asians, panethnic stereotypes (such as the inaccurate model minority stereotype) have sometimes caused society to overlook their needs and exclude them from equal-opportunity programs.